Growing up in Christ

What fresh Hell is this

If you spend your life seeking answers instead of God you will never find them. Not the real ones. If instead you seek God you will find Him, and all the answers along with Him. If you do not personally know Him, then you never personally sought Him. You might have ridden along as someone else searched for awhile, or looked for Him in the wrong place. But then He tells us where to look. Perhaps you were even religious at some point. God is not, nor does He want you to be. We will never get God to think the way men do. He cannot be trained in critical exegetical scholarship, nor will He join your think tank or even someone’s argument. The very capacity for knowledge that you have is a single drop from His ocean, of which He has many. He cannot be taught new things or make room for the ideas of others. He knows everything. Man cannot modernize Him or His Word as many churches and writers of today have done. He is the LORD and He changes not. And He says so in His book that he wrote through anointed men for all other men to read.

When Jesus shows up it is not to take sides, it is to take over. If you know Him this will be very cool. If you don’t know Him, you will not like it. This current attempt at modernization is simply a departure from Him, nothing more. “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” I didn’t say that, Jesus did. God is so serious about His Word that He even puts it above His Name, and that’s pretty high up there. His Word is never taken seriously by people who do not take Him seriously. He will not be packaged or boxed or kept in His place. The earth and everything on it and in it belong to Him. He does not need your belief in order to exist, He exists whether you believe in Him or not. He needs your belief to get you to Heaven. The tricky thing about making creatures identical to yourself is that they can say no. Or even tell you to go to Hell. If that is where you find yourself and you want to stay there, then you should not waste your time reading this book.

If that’s where you are and you want to change – then keep reading brother. If you don’t know where in the Hell you’re at and don’t know what to think about any of it, the you should keep reading too. Because everybody is going to Hell. Everyone on the planet is going to Hell. Everyone. No if ands or buts. It doesn’t matter what we think, how we feel or what we want. You are going to Hell. It is not an option, and it’s not open for discussion. It is automatic. You don’t have to do anything bad, you’re going anyway. Even if you were really really good, you are still going. If you were born as a human being on this planet, going to Hell is a certainty. That is all you had to do and it came with the territory. But there is an explanation and there is a single option. Something available as a choice to going to Hell. Something other than the certainty. If you want it, then you must do something else to get it. Here’s the explanation . . . you’re going to Hell. Oh sorry, I already said that.

When we were born, it was without any say at all in the color of our skin, our gender, who your parents were, or even how you looked. All of that was decided before you and I got here. So are the rules of the game, long before we arrived. God has given all men free will so each can choose how they will operate within the parameters, but the parameters are set. You will stand before God as either your Father or your Judge, but you will stand before Him. It is inevitable and it is one of the parameters. This particular episode began with a man made in God’s image, a woman made from a part of the man, thus giving us two parts of the same whole. As only a part of your mom and dad went into making you, you cannot be shocked at this. They lived in a beautiful place without a single need , where nothing could hurt them and Death did not exist. God loved them and they loved Him, and they got to spend time together every day. Man was given the authority and made head over the whole earth, including the sun moon and stars – in the same way that God was head over man and the whole universe.

Then came Lucifer, to try to get back illegally what was once his, before Adam. He had been ruler of the whole earth from Eden in the previous episode called the pre-Adamite world. Which had kings and cities, and it was these whom he led in worship of God and had been anointed a guardian angel over. Until he started talking smack to all of them about God since he had already decided in his heart that he was going to take over. Talking smack about people will always give you trouble, even today. Especially those in authority over you. So he launched an invasion against God and ascended to Heaven from the earth with a third of all the angels. Where he was met by Michael the archangel of God, along with the other angels who still loved God and didn’t want His job.

Michael immediately kicked Lucifer’s butt and tossed him back to earth just like lightening! Jesus said He saw it happen, He was there. That’s probably where the devil sized underwater crater in the Gulf of Mexico came from. He had been talking out of his rear about God for so long that by the time he bumped into Michael, it caught on fire. It’s a good thing he hit water first, he needed something to put it out. See, God was still being cool to him even after he was fired. Alright alright, I had to throw that last one in. This rebellion of Lucifer’s caused the destruction of the earth of that time along with it’s inhabitants, and the falling away of one third of all the angels. It was literally thrown into chaos, existing in a state where the laws of physics no longer applied, even light. Much like the singularity in a black hole, even the light is gone.

It was from this chaos in Genesis 1:2 (tohu va bohu in Hebrew) that God re-created the earth, starting with turning the lights back on by verse 3. Creating Adam and Eve by verse 27, with the Devil re-gaining control of the earth by duping Adam and Eve to rebel against God (just as he did) by verse 6 of chapter 3. If God had decided right here to destroy Lucifer because of how badly he messed up, all of the other angels wouldn’t have loved God, they would have feared Him. They would have thought look what God did to Lucifer,if we don’t get our act together – He’ll do the same thing to us. So what God did instead of destroying, was to create Heaven and earth, Adam and Eve and you and me, and everybody you know to prove one thing in the end . . . . that Love will overcome evil. It is as though He was saying – you saw me everyday Lucifer, you knew me and my goodness and still went against me. I will create a race of people who won’t even see me and of their own free will they will choose to re-enact the plan of salvation and choose Love over evil .

It was never intended to make sense and appeal to our reason and logic. It is supposed to require belief, which is always an act of the will. Since it had been through departure from believing God and thus obeying Him, we were taken out of a world where Life was the constant and into a world where Death is the constant. No matter how much life was produced. As it still is today. Since the devil loves to kill, you can see how this is somewhat of a heaven for him, he thinks. When really it will all boomerang back on him as God causes the devil and his own devices to bring back to Himself what was stolen from Him in the first place. Namely you and me, and anybody else that wants to come Home. It is the place we were always meant for, which is why I often feel so terribly out of place here.

God is smarter than the devil, and much more powerful. So the devil is really not His problem, he’s our problem. As it was our ancestors who put him in charge. We are God’s problem, which has already been solved. In fact He has the only solution. A lot of people don’t want to hear that, so they try to find other routes. These other religions don’t offer some viable alternative to Jesus Christ, but they are united in one thing: They are against the sovereignty of Jesus, they do not want Him to be their King. And they will not let Him be their God, they will not. They would rather serve a god that they or the devil made up, so they can do whatever they want. Without accountability and without consequence. Which of course makes their god a puppet god who does things the way they want them done. Putting them in charge so that they themselves are god. The Bible has a word for that, it is Idolatry; creating false gods. False gods that demand your obedience .

Islam is the Arabic term for submission. Allah is a god that demands his followers die for him. Gee I wonder who made that up. Must not be too powerful if he needs you to die for him. I find it hilarious. And don’t just kill yourself, no – take a bunch of people who don’t want to go with you! Whereas Jesus, a Greek word which is a combination of Jehovah and Hosea, literally means God Almighty as Redeemer (or Savior) has Come! To buy you back from a corrupt and perverted system where you are condemned to die. Hmmm? Which one sounds more appealing to your spirit, and which one sounds like men made it up. God who knows you personally and loves you so much He died to prove it – or the meanie god who doesn’t even want to know you and insists you die for him, to prove your submission. Submission to what. You better check behind that curtain Tin Man. Don’t say you didn’t know because you have been told .

There is no comparison between Christianity and Islam. If you thought they were comparable because a corrupt and failing society accepts them, with the never ending push through the apparatus of media, well they are not. It is like comparing a wheel barrel to the Starship Enterprise. In one you can labor to push around a few things slowly, and is based pretty much upon what you do. With none of it ever changing you, only wearing you out and frustrating you. Islam has no plan of Salvation and does not even address Sin. Where if you climb aboard the other one (and you are welcome) you can live the God kind of Life. Which is what He always intended and where everything is provided. You are taught the ways of God as you journey back Home, taking as many with you as are willing to go. The only true Faith is based entirely upon what has already been done for you, by another. And the acquiring of it lies completely in your accepting that.

In fact the whole of Christianity turns on our learning to receive from Him what He has already done for us. Sounds easy, but it is actually very difficult for the natural man. Our fallen nature likes to do things for itself, it wants to have a hand in things because it wants some of the credit. Your fallen nature also loves his independence. Something he picked up in the fall, along with death, fear and a spirit of pride that is so big – it’s off the charts. We can either stand against the devil the way God’s instruction manual says to, and it says very clearly how. He sent it to help us get back to the place where Life is the constant. If we refuse the help that is offered, in the end we will join the devil in the place he is going. It is in fact a place that was made only for him and the angels that fell away with him. Lucifer was created and began as a good guy, remember.

Hell is very much a place that was not meant for men at all. That is the first thing to notice immediately upon arrival, for any thinking of going. You will very slowly shake your head in disbelief as you think “the existence of this place and the existence of men have nothing in common, men do not belong here.” Right before the screaming starts. Of course it quickly deteriorates to a place far beyond screaming, the screams are just initial. It seems to me just to be the first response of our psyche in not knowing what else to do when confronted with a level of suffering impossible on earth. As this suffering cannot kill you, it just tortures you, then replenishes the material so you can be tortured again, forever. Because it takes place in the spiritual realm on an eternal plane, the pain runs so much deeper than your flesh could ever know in this world.

In the chapter on Hell in his exceptional book The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis explains how although the Lord does stress the terror of Hell with unsparing severity – it is not so much the duration He emphasizes, but the finality. The finality. It is so completely final. Final Destination, the nation you were destined for if you didn’t opt out by believing God. So here’s how you get out of all that if you decide you don’t want to go the place everyone is already going by default. It is a process called salvation. Saving you from where you are at and where you are going by laying hold of the lifeline that’s been thrown to you all of your life. Instead of just casually or intentionally ignoring it as we’ve all done so often before.

But mostly it saves us from our Self, and the swampy stuck in the mud condition that we were born into called sin. You were meant to fly, and you are crawling around in the mud. That is why if you listen to your heart and not your head, rejecting God’s offer of peace which Christ bought for us doesn’t even seem right. In every living soul there is a thirst for God, we want to draw near Him. Yet our fallen nature opposes Him, it even hates Him. Each of us has to decide which of the two sides within ourselves that we will join. You will hear the voice of both, but you can only side with one.